You can just use silent fans, and still have decent performance. That is one of the reasons why radiator's normally ship with none.

Problem is, fans silent or not still produce noise. If I can use a HSF and have one fan on the CPU why have 2-4 fans on a radiator? In addition, those fans are exposed and are not inside the case most of the time. One person whispering in a library doesn't seem like much but when the whole library is whispering it produces a lot of noise, same goes with silent fans.

My next build will have to be as close to silent as possible. I hope my Lian Li PC-A20 will meet those expectations. I hope I can keep it under seven fans running in that machine when I start the build, fans include: 1x front, 1x middle b-pillar, 1x rear, 1x CPU, 1x GPU, 1x PSU and probably the 1 more if I decide to go dual GPU.

Well I would just stick to watercooling first just to get your tounge wet. Then when you know you've had enough of the basic dog food, go with purina dog chow. Get my drift here. Even ira-k will tell you that you should watercool first just to get a general idea then you can go even further from there